Interstate 355 and the Legacy of Daniel Burnham

While it is true that the Plan of Chicago was prescient in calling for a system of highways encircling and radiating from Chicago, I doubt that Burnham and his fellow planners would look at our superslabs with anything other than horror. They anticipated that the Chicago metropolitan area would expand—in fact, they expected that it would eventually be the largest metro area in the world. Writing in 1909, Burnham and Edward H. Bennett, the co-authors of the Plan, stated “Chicago is now facing the momentous fact that fifty years hence, when the children of to-day are at the height of their power and influence, this city will be larger than London: that is, larger than any existing city…if the national and local conditions governing the population of Chicago shall average in the future exactly as in the past the population in 1952 will be 13,250,000.”

Forces beyond the ability of Burnham and Bennett to foresee led to a current population in the metro area of 9,505,748, significantly less than the 1909 estimates. In some ways, however, clearly the reasons for less-than-anticipated growth, as well as the spread of sprawl and our over-reliance on the personal automobile can be traced to the fact that some of the important prescriptions for healthy growth in the Plan were ignored.

One example that can be seen as perhaps a failure of the Plan, in one sense, and a precept that was ignored to our ongoing detriment, was that the Plan assumed a continuing preeminence in rail passenger service as the main transportation mode for both long distance and intra-metropolitan travel. In 1909, twenty-two trunk rail lines entered Chicago “from every possible direction, and with connections extending to all portions of the country.” The expectation was that the rail traffic would continue to be the lifeblood of the region as long as adjustments were made to “handle the traffic of the railroads with dispatch and at the lowest cost. The city is too large for each railroad to attempt to maintain a separate system unrelated to that of any other except the physical connection of the tracks. The time has come to develop one common system for the handling of freight,--a traffic clearing-house.” The freight center was to be located in the general area of Summit, Illinois, and would be linked by underground rail lines to the river harbors on the lakefront at the Chicago River and the Calumet River.

This scheme would have diverted all freight rail traffic outside of the city of Chicago to a central freight handling yard, so that all cartage that was not destinating or originating in the city could bypass the city proper. Passenger rail would also be consolidated under the Plan, with a series of rail terminals arrayed in an ‘L’ shape centered on Roosevelt Road and Halsted Street. Rapid transit, in the form of underground and overhead loops, would link the passenger rail stations to the city center and the neighborhoods of Chicago. Consolidation and rationalization of rail service, it was believed, would keep Chicago as the most important hub of the greatest transportation network ever devised. The Plan gave no consideration to the concept of rail transit diminishing in importance.

With a rational approach to rail as the lynchpin of their Plan, Burnham and Bennett assumed that the addition of a correlated system of radial and encircling highways would allow for continued growth of the region and would give proper place to both the remaining horse-drawn vehicles as well as the new automobiles. “While good highways are of great value to the terminal cities, they are of even greater value to the outlying towns, and of greatest value to the farming communities through which they pass. Good roads add an element of better living to an agricultural community; they afford ready communication with the city and reduce materially the cost of handling farm products of all kinds; and also they promote communication between farms. These state highways should invariably include a work-road for heavy loads, and also a pleasure drive. The two should be separated by a grassway and there should be grass plots at the sides, and not less than three roads of trees should be planted. The country schools should be on these highways.”

Highways of this description make sense only in a system where freight is carried long-distance by rail, not over-the-road 18-wheelers, and where the majority of passenger traffic is riding the rails as well. This allows the highways to be used for farm-to-market trips and for vacations and holiday travel. To each its own place and proportion.

I believe that if something like Burnham and Bennett’s vision could have materialized, we would be the better for it. Rail transport creates conditions that work against sprawl. If one is dependent upon a transportation system that concentrates its service around depots, there is a disadvantage to locating too far from that depot. The worst type of expansion becomes the norm when distance becomes a non-issue. Subdivisions are built with no concern for aesthetics and quality of construction. As we have been warned by Burnham and Bennett, “Too often…the suburb is laid out by the speculative real estate agent who exerts himself to make every dollar invested turn into as many dollars as possible. Human ingenuity contrives to crowd the maximum number of building lots into the minimum space; if native trees exist on the land they are ruthlessly sacrificed. Then the speculative builder takes matters in hand and in a few months the narrow, grassless streets are lined with rows of cheaply constructed dwellings…in ten years or less the dwellings are dropping to pieces.” Looking at the new subdivisions now sprouting on former farmland in DuPage and Will County, this seems like a prescient message.

The type of highway envisioned by the Plan is exactly the type we now refer to as a “blue highway,” the two-to-four lane thoroughfare which allowed for unlimited access, great views of the natural landscape, and easy connection to the surrounding cities and towns. In other words, the very thing roadies yearn for as they seek out old Route 66, the Lincoln Highway, or the Dixie Highway. These highways would certainly attract the type of business that would serve travelers; but if the local population was dependent on rail for day-to-day needs, then commercial growth appealing to locals would concentrate around depots and transit stops. To each its own place and proportion. No sprawl, and therefore no crawl along choked roads.

The Plan states, “At the earliest possible date measures should be taken for beginning what may be termed the outer encircling highway. Beginning at Kenosha on the north, this thoroughfare would run through Pleasant Prairie, Trevor, and Wilmot to McHenry, thus passing through the northern lake region. Here are the headwaters of the Fox River, lying in natural scenery of much beauty; here too are a large number of lakes and waterways surrounded by hills, the whole forming at extensive parklike territory that willl become an important adjunct of Chicago life when properly improved, and when suitable connections are secured.

”Beyond McHenry, this outer encircling highway continues on through Woodstock, Marengo, Genoa, Sycamore, De Kalb, Cortland, Sandwich, Millington, and Morris; thence it runs beside or near the Kankakee River through Wilmington, Kankakee, Momence, Shelby, and Maysville, the scenery along the route being very interesting, and much of it romantically beautiful. From Maysville the highway bends north through Valparaiso to Lake Michigan at Michigan City; or by another route from Maysville through La Crosse, Wellsboro, and La Porte to Michigan City, the total length from Kenosha around to Michigan City being approximately two hundred and fifty miles. It is obvious that such a highway, properly built and adorned, would become a strong influence in the development of the social and material prosperity of each of the cities involved, and of all the farming communities along the entire route.”

The Plan goes on: “The encircling highway next inside the outer one above described begins at Waukegan and passes through Libertyville to Lake Zurich; thence by two routes, one through Barrington to Elgin, the other bending around to skirt the Fox River near Algonquin and Dundee to Elgin, and on through St. Charles, Geneva, and Batavia to Aurora. From Aurora the highway continues to Plainfield, where it crosses the DuPage River, thence through Joliet, and by one route through Manhattan, Monee, Eagle Lake, Cedar Lake, Crown Point, and Hobart, to Lake Michigan; and by another route from Joliet, through Chicago Heights, Griffith, and Tolleston to Gary, on the Lake. The highway will be approximately one hundred and forty miles long, and nearly the whole of the northern part of it is very picturesque.”